RPGamer Interviews Chris Whiteside and Eric Flannum

In a new interview by RPGamer’s Becky Cunningham, ArenaNet’s Chris Whiteside and Eric Flannum talked about the feedback ArenaNet has been getting from the beta weekend events, and changes fans can expect to see in the future beta event(s) and at launch. The interview covers a large range of topics from combat, mini-games, to dyes.

Be sure to read the entire article for all the details. However, the biggest takeaway seems to be upcoming changes to both Melee combat and Telegraphing as detailed by Chris Whiteside.

Much of the feedback we are looking into now surrounds balancing, accessibility, tutorials, and a number of “nice to have” requests from the community.

Aside from the areas listed above, we are doing some work on melee vs. ranged balancing (across the game) as well as finishing off a handful of core systems and features, based on the feedback we received from the previous event. We also have a few new things to show off!

When asked about the difficulty of the Ascalonian Catacombs:

We felt that the difficulty shouldn’t be lowered, however, as we don’t believe this to be the issue.

Instead, we isolated two key areas that we will be working on to ensure that all players have more of an equal footing based on the diversity of their previous game experiences. First, we are going to do some work on melee combat to give players more time to react to enemy attacks and behaviors. Second, we will be putting in systems that telegraph changes in the game states and behaviors of enemies and bosses dependent on how the group is interacting with them. A good example of this is the lack of perceivable telegraphs when the Spider Queen spawns her spiders.

They also comment that the feedback between the two beta events has shift from what they call “macro” changes, to “micro” changes. They also thank fans for their continued feedback and support.